It seems anywhere a human eye is needed, there is a possibility
to get a UAV in that space. You continue
to see the potential roles an unmanned aerospace system (UAS) can take on. With commercial of the shelf (COTS) parts
becoming more available, a UAV can play the role of inspection in confined or
difficult to reach places.
Autonomous
Elevator Inspection
Hong Kong is a density populated city with a great
deal of vertical travel through buildings.
There are over 63,000 elevators totaling 30 million trips a day. They have experienced a rise in elevator
mishaps from 248 in 2010 to 483 in 2015.
Obviously, elevators need to be cleaned, maintained and inspected
monthly. The ‘manned’ inspection of
elevators consists of high zone floors and low zone floors that technicians do
not have a way to check since they are not accessible. There are other issues with this type of
maintenance such as lack of qualified technicians, high cost and lack of
standardization in the elevator maintenance industry (Kit, 2016).
The proposal for an UAS using the Parrot AR.Drone to
sufficiently and effectively inspect elevator cables and pulleys for defects
autonomously is to be highly considered.
Since it is almost impossible to manually pilot a UAV upward and
downward in the low luminance elevator shaft, a high level of autonomy is ideal
in this situation. The 4 modules that
make this happen are the Image Processing, Simultaneous Localization and
Mapping (SLAM), Navigation and Control, and Visual Inspection modules (Kit,
2016). Technicians can input the basic
information such as the number of and diameter of cables, height of the
building, and size of the elevator shaft.
The UAS system uses this as a template to locate the cables.
SLAM is effective for elevator inspection because the
system can acquire the images, store the cable information, and generate a
real-time map. The algorithms for cable
recognition in a low luminance environment are customized in a grayscale image by
a visual camera. The Parrot AR.Drone is
low cost, robust, and easy to use system equipped with gyroscope,
accelerometer, altimeter, and 2 cameras.
This UAV is well equipped for this application for its hardware and
onboard software using sensors to control roll, pitch, and vertical velocity.
Autonomous UAS elevator inspection has the capability
to not only perform the dull, dirty, and dangerous task but also revolutionize
the way elevator maintenance is accomplished by improving maintenance quality
and creating higher standards in this field.
References
Kit, H. T., & Chen, H. (2016). Autonomous elevator
inspection with unmanned aerial vehicle. Paper presented at the 26-33.
doi:10.1109/APWC-on-CSE.2016.016
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